fic / a door is not a door when it's ajar ii
#004
baekhyun + chen, chanyeol + d.o. / pg / 1500 words
mermaid!au: chanyeol has been sulking about nobody believing his prowess in the water, so baekhyun decides it’s time for a road trip
Chanyeol has been sulking about nobody believing his prowess in the water, so Baekhyun decides it’s time for a road trip. This means kidnapping Junmyeon for the weekend, because having a road trip requires someone who can actually drive.
“But...but what about the stack of homework on my desk that I’m too stressed to really do…” the older boy whimpers, pulling away from his dormmate.
“Shhhh, Myeonnie, I’m sure the fresh air will be good for you,” Baekhyun soothes, placing his hand on Junmyeon’s tightly clasped ones. “You need a break.”
Junmyeon looks unsure, but he nods anyway. “If you say so…”
And so the unsanctified hours of Saturday morning see five boys packing themselves into a car which probably doesn’t deserve the playlist of trashy pop that Chanyeol has brought on an unmarked white disk.
“I don’t want the handwriting traced back to me,” he explains from the middle back seat. “What happens on the trip stays on the trip.”
“If you wake me up before we get there, you’ll have injuries that won’t just stay on the trip, Chanyeol.” Kyungsoo mashes his face into the other’s shoulder. Honestly, Chanyeol hadn’t heard more than ‘wake me up’.
On the other side, Jongdae pouts at them. “At least you get to sit next to your man. Baek and I are split by the great chasm of the front and back.”
“No offence, Jongdae,” Junmyeon cuts in, voice slightly higher than usual, “but you two are a little bit much to handle. I don’t think I’d survive the next three hours in a confined space with you two sitting together.”
Jongdae opens his mouth to argue, then snaps it shut as the car swerves. An anxious laugh from the front seat follows. “Sorry, I thought I saw my ex.”
☆ ☆ ☆
Despite the many threats and insults thrown, they make it to the beach mostly unscathed. It’s somewhat cloudy when they arrive, but that doesn’t stop Chanyeol from racing out to the water, shedding clothes on the sand as he goes. Jongdae’s about to scream something about public indecency when POP - Chanyeol’s very bare backside and whatever was dangling on the other side of it are replaced by a long rust-coloured tail.
“What the fuck, Park? A pop? Really? Is this a cartoon?”
Sitting on the edge of the water, Chanyeol swishes around a bit experimentally. The waves crash around him and he squeals a little at the sudden cold. “I can’t help what my tail forming looks like! Don’t insult my biology!”
“Your biology is insulting YOU!”
☆ ☆ ☆
Baekhyun’s tail formation isn’t quite as abrupt, but he’s also more careful about approaching the waterline. Unlike Chanyeol, Baekhyun is a freshwater mermaid - hailing from a huge lake further inland, rather than the open sea. (Chanyeol always insists that he comes from close to the coast, but nobody believes that for a second.)
A pair of hands smooth down his shoulders from behind. Featherlight touches trail along the area where his scales blend into his skin, now paler and firmer than it is when he walks around on land. He takes the hand, lacing his webbed fingers with it from the back, and gently places it on the grey-blue of his fins. Beside his ear, Jongdae inhales sharply.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes, moving his hand along with reverence. He gazes at Baekhyun’s face with an expression that Baekhyun has never seen on him before - a kind of awed wonder. It makes him want to blush, but mermaids can’t physically do that so he doesn’t.
“Yah,” he teases, but his voice is too soft to have any real bite. “What’s gotten into you? I’m still the same person, Jongdae-ah.”
It takes a few seconds, but Jongdae seems to emerge from a daze and a coy curl returns to his lips. “That just means you’re always breathtakingly stunning.”
“Get away from me, you greasy old man,” Baekhyun laughs, and he definitely doesn’t discretely brush away an emotional tear. Or a few. Definitely not.
☆ ☆ ☆
Kyungsoo stands a few safe metres from the tide’s edge, gazing at his boyfriend’s antics about a hundred metres out. He’s not wearing a shirt and his skin is completely even, unlike the typically patchy torsos of his mermaid friends in their legged forms.
Then again, Kyungsoo is not a normal mermaid.
He’s not so sure he wants to show off how different he really is to Chanyeol right now.
Junmyeon is lying down on the towels they had laid out, limbs sprawled in four directions and a terrible floppy hat covering his face. There’s a spot of shimmering scales the shape of a roughly lopsided heart above his bellybutton. Kyungsoo snorts. It’s cute. Trust Junmyeon.
“Soo, come and join me!”
In the time that he’d looked away, Chanyeol had swum back to shore, legs carrying him out of the shallows. He all but stumbles into Kyungsoo in all his very naked glory, and the small boy huffs under his weight. “Soo, come into the water.”
“Chanyeol.” He swallows, mouth dry. “Do you remember what I said about my...water form?” It isn’t exactly right to say his true form, or main state, since he had been raised on land. He wraps his hand around Chanyeol’s forearm nervously.
“Yeah, I do. It’s okay, Kyungsoo. You’ll be fine.”
Taking a quick glance down the beach to find that Baekhyun and Jongdae have disappeared off somewhere and are probably doing something that is illegal in public, Kyungsoo begins to remove the rest of his clothes. Junmyeon is still unaware behind him, and he lets himself be tugged toward the waves.
At the last moment, he pulls back a bit.
“Chanyeol, after this, just…” he trails off, suddenly unsure about everything. “Just...try not to say anything that will hurt my feelings too much.” If Chanyeol is surprised by his uncharacteristic unconfidence, he doesn’t let on, so Kyungsoo pushes forward, screwing his eyes shut.
The moment the water reaches his knees, he can feel the transition take place. His legs come together and lengthen, scales pooling on his skin like rain on sidewalks. They cover the end of his tail and move up, slowing toward his waist.
Then, past that, they continue up his body. Like dominoes falling, his blank chest becomes swathed in an iridescent grey, then his neck, face, scalp. His hair disappears. When he opens his eyes, they are round and black to the edges.
By the end, it is hard to imagine that any part of him is human at all.
The teeth in his mouth are thin and sharp, but when he speaks the voice that comes out is the same as ever.
“So…”
“So!” Chanyeol’s grin is as bright as the sun, and Kyungsoo is momentarily blinded. As they go out farther, the taller wraps a casual arm around his waist. “Hey you, come closer. That wasn’t so bad, was it? From the way you had been acting, you could have been about to tell me you were gay like the rest of our friends have been doing. It would have really been more shocking to me, let’s be - ah!”
Chanyeol’s nonsense dissolves into squawks as Kyungsoo comes upon him with a series of indignant slaps. When he pulls him into a tender embrace later on, however, Kyungsoo holds him close with all the thanks he can’t verbalise, beneath the waves.
☆ ☆ ☆
Chanyeol does, eventually, get to prove that he was not just bluffing when he claimed to be a co-ordinated being in the sea. He moves through rips with an ease that even Junmyeon, a river mermaid, acknowledges.
“HAH! I TOLD YOU SO,” he hollers, words muffled by the water spilling out of his mouth.
Jongdae crosses his arms and sticks out his tongue. “...I suppose that yes, you can actually swim in a straight line.”
The tall boy cocks his head to the side, tracing the surface of the water with his palms. “That’s kind of an essential skill where I come from. There are few landmarks in open water, so you have to be very precise about where you go.”
“Are you sure you want to insist you live near the coast, Chanyeol?”
He waves a hand in dismissal. “It’s a relative term. I don’t hail from the middle of the Pacific, if that’s what you’re wheedling for.”
They pack up in the afternoon, exhausted but content, and head back to the car. Even Junmyeon seems a little brighter and less tightly wound than usual.
By the time they’re almost back, most of them are asleep. Asleep, that is, until Junmyeon makes a sharp turn around a corner onto a street that’s off course. The GPS starts to go off at him, and if it were an actual person, it probably would have been making choice comments on his intellect and qualification for a driver’s license.
“Sorry guys,” Junmyeon mutters, checking his mirrors and letting out a tight laugh. “That really was my ex, this time.”
note:
Thank you for your comments on the previous few drabbles ☆☆☆ I don't have a sense of humour, so I'm really glad that you liked them. This was supposed to be short like the others but it spiralled out of hand, so sorry that really trash ;_; It was supposed to be funny but in reality it turned out to be a giant sap fest. I hope you enjoyed it anyway~